Does the Universe have consciousness?
- Thread starter hansda
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I think you need to help me understand a little better what you mean by "as it we could possibly be made of something else, from somewhere else". I don't see how we could be any other way than we are. Do you suppose that the universe goes through some change in state and what we are made of is derived from some previous state of things? I don't see how, because if it was so, then is seems like the fallacy of infinite regression would be calling, what state came before that, and before that?
I'd agree.
So consciousness of all the living beings in the Universe would be same.
How consciousness is different from life energy?
I think job of 'consciousness' is only to witness. " To choose" may not be the job of consciousness. That may be the job of our MIND.
Do you think consciousness of different living beings are different? I dont think so.
No.
Consider a perfect human being or a perfect living being. Will not his response to any change be perfect and spontaneous?
I think we can consider our universe as a very perfect entity. If we compare the structure of a human being or a living being with the structure of our universe, some similarities can be found. Human Being has a body, mind and consciousness. Our universe has a body which can be seen but may be its mind and consciousness are invisible. As the universe is the perfect entity its mind also may be the perfect mind. A perfect mind is in a state of no-mind condition, where all the responses become perfect and spontaneous. So may be our universe is in a state of no-mind condition.
Responses of a human being is not perfect/spontaneous, because the human being is not perfect. His mind is not perfect. But if a human being is perfect or if his mind is perfect, i think responses of a human being can be perfect and spontaneous.
I mean when the consciousness of a perfect human being witnesses some changes, what will be his response? Will it not be perfect?
TY, you are very astute
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I look at it from another angle... We humans and any intelligent life form anywhere across the universe have been the product of life generation and evolution, IMHO. In that sense, the universe does that, not consciously, but by default. The universe is what it is, and part of that is the ability, and on a grand scale the certainty that intelligent life arises and evolves. There is no standard for the perfect individual though, and so it is pretty subjective.
Atleast the universe is perfect. Human beings may not be perfect.
Yes, a perfect universe. It does what its supposed to do because it can do things no other way (assuming the invariant natural laws and all). But take us humans, it is freewill and choice that gets us in trouble, lol.
It is hard to answer that as if it was one question so let me break it down into two statements:
The cousciousness of living beings would be the result of our perceptions and I'm not saying that all intelligent life forms would have the same five senses; they may have four or six, etc, so their consciousness would be different based on the senses that were particular to that life form.
But I do imagine a sameness in the consciousness of individuals regardless of their life forms in the regard that they are conscious of what they can perceive through what ever senses they have. Individuals though, filter their perceptions through their own personal history of learning and beliefs, and so no two individuals will necessarily have the same perception of similar events.
You are right, human beings are not perfect. Perfect human beings are hypothetical concept. But atleast some could achieve this perfection.
Or at least strive to achieve their individual concept of perfection.
Since there is no such thing as a "perfect" human you can then therefor extrapolate that there's no such thing then as a "perfect" response but only a guess since humans do not know everything that is happening even where they are located.
Consider an ocean current. Is it something that merely exists within the ocean, or is it the ocean itself? Certainly it's a part of the ocean that is manifesting some particular behaviour, and it's sometimes appropriate/useful to consider that behaviour apart from that of the rest of the ocean, but when doing so it's easy to start thinking of it as some separate entity, when it's really not.
I was simply pointing out that merely describing ourselves as beings that exist within the universe gives an impression (although perhaps not directly, or obviously) that we could be separate from it.
I see the analogy now. Consciousness of people would equate to the current in the ocean, and the ocean would equate to the universe.
When I contemplate that it occurs to me that the consciousness of the people is individual and so there would have to be some undetected medium to carry the brain waves of people's consciousness across the universe, making the sum of those waves in space equate to the consciousness of the universe (The waves could be self propagating, I guess). However, I can't quite get to a conscious universe from that analogy because people act and react to what they are conscious of. Are you hypothesizing that the universe can act on that supposed human consciousness?
Actually I don't believe that the universe is conscious. There's no evidence that really suggests it is. To me, the universe is simply a force of nature (it's nature itself, actually). But we can't escape the fact that it's capable of manifesting consciousness, and since it can do that, I've come to believe that matter must have properties that are essentially the seeds of such a phenomenon. In other words, that consciousness is a high order expression of properties that are inherent in the fabric of the universe itself in some primal or elemental form.
When saying such things however, people often think you're endowing all matter with conscious awareness and cognition, but that's not what I'm doing here. As far as I can tell, in order for such things to emerge, you need some sort of complex sustainable interactive architecture. But it does leave room for the possibility that human-like consciousness, along with what we may consider to be lower levels of consciousness attributable to other creatures, is just a small part of a class of phenomena that is larger in scope than we typically imagine, much of which could be manifested in physical systems that are quite unlike the human brain.
When saying such things however, people often think you're endowing all matter with conscious awareness and cognition, but that's not what I'm doing here. As far as I can tell, in order for such things to emerge, you need some sort of complex sustainable interactive architecture. But it does leave room for the possibility that human-like consciousness, along with what we may consider to be lower levels of consciousness attributable to other creatures, is just a small part of a class of phenomena that is larger in scope than we typically imagine, much of which could be manifested in physical systems that are quite unlike the human brain.
Consciousness appears related to information storage.
That the Universe gives rise to consciousness is undoubtedly true.
But conscious itself? I don't think so.
That the Universe gives rise to consciousness is undoubtedly true.
But conscious itself? I don't think so.
